Asset Allocation – Page 169
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Features
Revolution for self-employed
In common with many European countries, Belgium’s public pension schemes are PAYG; also in common with other European countries, future demographic projections show clearly that these schemes will come under huge financial pressures. A recent report of the OECD hghlighted the effects of longevity as the major challenge for Belgium’s ...
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In praise of risk
“I love risk. I like it because it produces returns for me”, said ABP chief investment officer Roderick Munsters at the 5th annual Institutional Fund Management conference in Geneva. Munsters was one of several industry heavyweights expressing views on the current and potential future challenges facing the pension fund, investment ...
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Making virtue of necessity
After the Second World War, Belgium developed a broad social security system that differentiated between different kinds of profession. Different schemes were set up for employees, the self-employed and civil servants. The decree of 28 December 1944 provided the populace with legally regulated and guaranteed protection, funded by contributions from ...
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Features
New ways of looking at risk
John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1924 that, “in the long run, we are all dead”. Existential concerns of a rather more pressing nature afflict pension funds in the Europe and the US as they wrestle with a combined shortfall of more than $600bn (€504bn). The ‘perfect storm’ of falling equity ...
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Plague of history
Last year the outlook for Austria’s pension schemes, the Pensionskassen, was not very promising. “The Pensionskassen started in 1990 as a way to enable companies to shift the risk of corporate pension funds from their balance sheets,” recalls Kurt Bednar of Mercer in Vienna. “They gained in popularity as equities ...
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Features
Schemes warned of 'herd mentality'
European pension funds have been warned about a possible “herd mentality” developing in hedge funds. “There appear to be a lot of pension funds in Europe going into hedge funds because everybody else is,” said Penny Green, chief executive of the Superannuation Arrangements of the University of London. She told ...
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Features
A guarantee of limitations
Last month one of the most famous monuments in Belgium and star of the 1958 World Expo - the Atomium - re-opened after more than a year of renovation work. Newly gleaming in the crisp winter sunshine, this remarkable structure of giant interconnected mirrored spheres presents an enduring – though ...
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Features
Going their own way
While governments across Europe are pulling out all the stops to ensure working people are making enough provision for retirement, the dominant forms of non-state pension schemes vary from country to country. Besides corporate schemes and industry-wide schemes, professional schemes perform a vital role on the pensions stage, even though ...
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Features
The 'generation pact' policy
Considering the expected demographic developments in Belgium, the level of employment in is too low, as a result of which the social security scheme being based on repartition (active people finance the social security system on behalf of inactive people) will come under pressure. In order to safeguard the Belgian ...
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Features
Going for full disclosure
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – in Austria, Estonia and Portugal – the same question: ‘What factors do you have to disclose?’ Here are their answers: Robert Kitt is fund manager at Estonia’s Hansa Investment Funds which has second pillar AUM of €155m and third ...
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Features
A different kind of risk
People are living longer. It may be good news for the population at large, but pension fund managers will not be celebrating. Longevity risk has become a serious issue to grapple with. Annuities are costing more, and insurers are getting agitated, demanding more information from pension funds and raising their ...
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Features
Working in a data minefield
Sector funds were introduced at the beginning of 2004 following the enactment of the Vandenbroucke Law to broaden membership of second pillar schemes. While this aim is well on the way to being achieved other challenges remain. When the law became effective, some sectors already had in place a Fonds ...
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Features
Making the connection
Although British Telecom (BT), the UK’s incumbent telecoms operator, provides pension schemes in each of the 140 or so countries in which it operates, only a tiny proportion – around 0.3% – of the £34bn €49.5bn) of assets under management are accounted for by the company’s foreign subsidiaries. “The UK ...
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Features
Conflicts still a possibility
Last month the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) warned consultants, asset managers and pension fund trustees to guard against potential conflicts of interest in a highly concentrated consultant industry. The financial watchdog’s ‘Financial Risk Outlook 2006’ raised concerns about an over-dependence by pension fund trustees on the advice, skill and ...
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Features
Conflicting priorities
In Hungary, as in many countries, the task of financing the state pension system is a growing problem. As market economics took hold in Hungary at the beginning of the 1990s, the real value of pensions fell away. This in turn made it clear that additional, private, funded pension provision ...
